


Not What I Expected

by Asukachan07



Series: MCU AUs [2]
Category: Black Widow (MCU), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Steve Rogers, F/M, Love Confessions, Mind Control, Natasha deserved better, Non-Explicit Sex, Partners to Lovers, Power Couple, Romanogers is Endgame, Some Fluff, Spinoff, based on another fic, kind of, mention of nudity, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 09:30:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19664617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asukachan07/pseuds/Asukachan07
Summary: Natasha's thoughts under the influence of the mind stone, and when she dealt with the aftermath.





	Not What I Expected

**Author's Note:**

> This is a spinoff of my multi-chapter fic, and it would be hard to read this without reading the original work (or re-reading chapters 9 and 10). 
> 
> Rough context: the Avengers were fighting Thanos on Zen Whoberi, and Thanos used the mind stone on Natasha and Steve.

“Get rid of your friends,” Thanos commanded her after wrapping his huge hand around her neck.

In retrospect, Natasha was surprised at how delicate he’d been about it. Her neck hadn’t bruised at all.

“I am not strong enough on my own,” she warned, and without thinking glanced at Steve who was staring in horror, having witnessed the change in her eyes.

“With Steve I’d have a better chance,” she offered succinctly. 

“Very well,” Thanos agreed before ducking away from Iron Man and Captain Marvel’s attack. 

As she distracted Tony with a widow bite, Natasha was surprised to note that she knew that she was being mind-controlled.

Yes, she was compulsively obeying Thanos’ order, but she soon realized that she could interpret it however she wanted.

Thanos definitely meant ‘kill your friends,’ but she chose to just keep them away from him. 

It was easy to throw Nebula’s knife away instead of stabbing her with it. It was natural to wince in sympathy when Thanos yanked Steve down to use the mind stone on him. It was instinctive to back him up when Tony tried to pull him away from the battlefield.

Why was Clint still mad at Loki then? This wasn’t too bad.

“Why did you choose me,” Steve asked her as soon as they had a second to breathe from facing off Nebula, Clint and Tony, who were stupidly pulling their punches. “Clint has a greater range.”

“Clint has already been through this,” Natasha reminded him before tackling him down and away to avoid one of Clint’s arrows. 

They rolled over - him backward and her forward - and got back up to their feet like two pieces of a well-oiled machine, assessing threat levels over each other’s shoulders.

“Also, I missed this,” she said before running toward Lady Sif who had re-joined the fight. If the warrior hadn’t been Asgardian, Natasha would’ve knocked her out cold a few times over.

“Missed what, fighting together? That’s all we did when we were under the radar,” Steve replied when he caught her by the shoulders to stop her from falling over from one of Sif’s powerful kicks.

He then brought them both to a crouch under his shield to protect them from two arrows knocked by Clint. 

It was delightful to have him converse with her in the middle of a fight, when normally he gave her clipped replies or told her to focus on the mission.

“Oh, come on Rogers,” Natasha teased, “we’re fighting on an alien planet against our own teammates, and this time we’re on the same side. Don’t tell me that you don’t find this fun,” she added just before she heard one of the arrows explode after hitting the ground. 

She quickly popped open a tiny bottle of gaseous ammonia and shoved it under her nose before the tranquilizing gas from the arrow could get to her. Steve was luckily immune to the gas.

“Ugh, now I’ll remember that gross smell instead of your scent every time I revisit this memory,” Steve said before they automatically rose to their feet to evade Lady Sif’s smaller but definitely heavier shield.

It was a good thing that Natasha’s heart was already beating fast, because Steve’s words would have made it run wild from baseline.

Steve himself looked shell-shocked at his own speech, and Natasha had to warn him about Tony coming from behind.

Her soldier - Wait, what? _Her_ soldier? - threw the shield over his shoulder without looking, hitting Tony right in the chest while staring at her with his jaw still on the floor.

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” Steve confessed with a frown. “I normally don’t think about you that way on the field, Nat, I promise!”

“Just off-duty, huh?” Natasha teased despite herself, and took advantage of picking up Steve’s shield to hide her surprise at her own words.

 _What the hell?_

“I think we should shut up now,” she told Steve as she passed him the shield just in time for him to block a tazing blast from Tony. 

Natasha herself had to duck from Lady Sif’s right hook - that would’ve hurt badly - and tried to sweep the Asgardian off her feet but the taller woman kicked her leg away.

The former spy lost her footing and winced in advance as she saw Sif’s fist coming too fast but at the last second Steve’s shield knocked away the Asgardian.

“Thanks!” Romanoff shouted over he shoulder before flipping out of the way of Sif’s next kick.

She rolled out of the way, slipping her arm under the shield’s straps on her way up.

“I should just get one of my own,” she drawled as she repositioned herself to face Sif.

“How do you sound so chipper being mind-controlled?” Clint told her as he sneaked behind her and suddenly got her in a chokehold with his bow.

Natasha tried to hit his side with the shield but he jerked her around and made her lose her footing again.

“What can I say, unlike lesser agents, I know how to turn any situation to my advantage,” she bantered casually before elbowing her best friend to the stomach and stomping on his right foot.

The mind stone was definitely making her say that because she would never be that petty to Clint, at least not out loud. 

As Clint grunted in pain, she wrestled around his flailing arms to give herself room and wiggled away the second she found an opening to his hold.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said reflectively, but it was half a lie.

She _had_ resented Clint for getting mind-controlled by Loki, because it had landed him on the bench for a few weeks at S.H.I.E.L.D, and after his psych eval he had been assigned to lower classification missions. Natasha had hated working with SWAT as her backup. At least later on she’d had Steve.

“Yes you did,” her former partner called her out with an amused smile. “Been mind-controlled before, remember?”

“I was only mad about it for a bit, it worked out perfectly in the end right, you were able to spend more time with Laura and the kids,” Natasha rushed to add.

She knew that she didn’t have to defed herself, not with Clint, but that stupid mind stone seemed to have some truth-serum- like effects.

“And you got paired up with Rogers so it _did_ work out perfectly,” the archer commented with a smile as he shot an arrow at her.

Natasha bent backwards to dodge it, and even before she straightened back up she knew that Clint had another arrow with her name on it at the ready, because Clint _never_ missed.

Fortunately Steve knew that too and ripped the arrow from Clint’s hand before sending him on the floor.

“Sorry, man,” Natasha heard the captain tell their teammate just as he broke the arrow in half.

The sound of something - someone - flying above their heads made the two mind-controlled Avengers look up.

“Oh, I’m going to be so sore after this,” Natasha lamented as she saw Thor coming their way.

“Why do you always say things that put suggestive images in my head?” Steve whined as he grabbed the shield from her. “This is why I don’t let you talk to me during missions. Sif incoming on your two.”

“You’re the one putting suggestive images in _my_ head, Rogers,” the former spy accused as she ran toward the Asgardian, squashing the thought of what she would be much happier being sore for.

* * *

“So,” Clint said as the PET bed slid out of the scanner, allowing Natasha to move freely again.

The redhead had hoped that her long-time friend would forget to joke about her getting mind-controlled just like him by the time they returned to the cruiser, but of course she had no such luck.

“Not what I expected,” Romanoff admitted as she hopped off the PET table, restraining a groan at the various aches in her body.

“All clear, Nat,” Bruce diagnosed as he looked up from his tablet from the other side of the room, a pleased smile on his fresh face.

Since the Hulk had been the one out to fight against Thanos, Bruce was not as tired as the rest of the team after battling the titan. Except from the two super captains and Hela, everyone was exhausted by the time they returned to the cruiser. The good news was that, with the stones in their possession, there was no big rush anymore. Loki and Thor needed time to figure out how to bring back half of the universe anyway, and the team had been invited to the first day of the Lunar festival the very next day. This break was well-earned.

No one had complained when Steve had announced that there would be no immediate debriefing after everyone had checked in at the medical bay. They would meet in two days just before taking off from Zen Whoberi.

Only Loki had lifted an eyebrow before disappearing into thin air, making it clear that he wouldn’t let Bruce or Nebula prod him - it so happened that the dozens of gadgets incorporated to the half-android’s body included advanced medical kits. 

Similarly, the other Asgardians had declined a medical examination, to the great disappointment of Tony who had hoped to get a ‘sneak peek at their remarkable constitution’.

“That’s all you have to say?” her former field partner questioned as they both walked out of the examination room, passing the rehab hall where Tony, Rhodey and Rocket were getting massages from headless bots.

“I was way too talkative,” Natasha reflected out loud as she glanced at Clint. “You weren’t when Loki used the mind stone on you.”

“He ordered me not to talk to anyone other than him and Selvig,” the archer recounted with a frown. “I was unnecessarily talkative to them, as if…”

“You had been given some extreme truth serum,” the redhead completed the sentence with a disbelieving shake of her head. “Sorry for saying what I said the way I said it, by the way.”

“Make it up to me by telling me what the heck Rogers told you after I tried to knock you out with tranquilizing gas,” Clint deadpanned. “You both looked like deer in headlights.”

The asshole even chuckled when Natasha groaned in embarrassment.

“He was complaining about the terrible smell of the ammonia salts,” she answered carefully.

“You owe me, Romanova,” Barton reminded her pointedly. “Tell me _everything_ he said.”

“Now I’ll remember that gross smell instead of your scent every time I revisit this memory,” she recited reluctantly. 

Clint blinked at her, slowing down as they both reached Natasha’s cabin.

“He _does_ jump at every opportunity to squeeze you under his shield,” the archer reflected before his narrowed eyes suddenly widened. “Ever since the Chitauri? He’s been pining for you for that long?”

“He hasn’t been pining for me,” the redhead denied with an eye roll. “He likes my scent, so what? I have a nice scent.”

“We all smell like sweat and blood on the field,” Clint pointed out with a shrug. “You less than us because women are weird…”

“Go to bed, Clint,” Natasha told her former partner with a playful shove to the shoulder. “We need to look sharp for that festival, we’re the first people from Earth to visit this planet.”

“I don’t think we’re worthy representatives of our species,” the archer commented with a chuckle as he stepped away to get to his own cabin.

* * *

“Your fighting styles are very different,” Natasha commented evenly after another round of cheers at Lady Sif and the Valkyrie’s peterred down at their corner of the long feast table.

It had intrigued the former S.HI.E.L.D agent that the only two female warriors of Asgard moved so differently on the battlefield. 

The taller brunette fought like Thor: she relied a lot on rapid series of powerful hits to overwhelm her opponents, and engaged multiple opponents as one unit. She moved around a lot, investing a lot of energy to change her guard, clearly approaching the fight without a detailed route to the final objective.

The Valkyrie, whose shorter stature was probably not an obstacle the way it was for Natasha, fought like her nevertheless: with calculated moves, considering each threat on her path, keeping her guard up most of the time yet allowing for a change in pace. She also was more likely to fight in pairs or groups than Sif.

While the Valkyrie seemed too engrossed with whatever subject of conversation she was engaged with Carol was, Sif looked away from Thor - who was the most vocal in the praise of the two Asgardian women - to smile at her.

“The Valkyrie’s combat style was taught in earlier Asgardian times,” the young-looking thousand something years old explained. “I had the honor to train with Thor and the Warriors Three, occasionally Loki, in the Einherjar style. Both styles build upon the same fundamental movements, however, which allows us to complement each other in a melee.”

“Makes sense,” the former spy acknowledged before taking a sip of whatever fermented fruit juice had been served.

“I must admit that I never thought it useful to adapt my movements to that of one particular shieldmate,” Lady sif said casually as she glanced at Steve. “Yesterday was my first time witnessing such synergy between two warriors. Not even Thor and Loki complement each other so perfectly. You and Captain Rogers could have possibly taken all of us down had you both been Asgardians.

Natasha realized that this was high praise coming from Sif, but couldn’t bother to smile too hard at the Asgardian, who got distracted by Thor anyways.

The redhead forced herself not to meet Steve’s eyes, which she could feel were directed at her.

Even after a whole day since being released from the effects of the mind stones, she was paranoid about having her thoughts written on her face.

Most people couldn’t read her face, but Steve could. It had been easy to avoid him right after the fight, and in the morning as they all prepared for the feast in a friendly chaos, but now Natasha wondered if she could come up with an excuse not to train when they got back on the cruiser.

Usually, Steve and her lingered after their group session to work on hand to hand combat and spatial coordination. That’s how, five years ago, Steve had started teaching her how to use his shield. 

Another toast was given to the team for saving the planet from Thanos, then everyone mingled as much as possible with the green-skinned people.

Natasha was about to stop evading Steve’s attention when Loki appeared between them, announcing with uncharacteristic alarm that the group needed to meet a.s.a.p.

* * *

“Are we going to talk about it?” Steve asked as he threw the shield at Natasha sideways before flipping backwards to avoid a bot’s fist.

She used the shield’s momentum to spin around counterclockwise, holding the shield above her head to deflect a laser beam and direct it to the bot coming at Steve before shoving the vibranium disk on the head of the bot shooting the beam.

The satisfying crunch that followed told Natasha that the bot was out of order, which was confirmed by F.R.I.D.A.Y.’s voice announcing the end of the simulation.

“I guess we are _now_ ,” the redhead mumbled as she pretended to inspect the shield while walking toward Steve. “We weren’t ourselves, we shouldn’t be held responsible for our actions, including the words we said. No harm done,” she told her teammate, too quickly even to her own ears.

She sighed as she _felt_ Rogers’ eyebrows rising. She hadn’t talked so guardedly to him in a long time.

“Hey, we can drop it if it’s making you uncomfortable,” Steve proposed, of course he would.

Natasha let her bad habit of chewing the inside of her lips show as she mulled over her thoughts.

She was attracted to Steve, that was no brainer. Come on, she was ex-KGB, not blind. The man was a walking dream.

But he’d asked her to be a friend, all these years ago when they were running away from Hydra, and that’s what she had tried her best to be ever since.

After whatever had happened between him and Sharon Carter hadn’t panned out, Natashha had allowed herself to fantasize about her and Steve becoming friends with benefits, because they both could have used some stress-relief during those outlaw days, or after losing to Thanos on Earth.

Or even last week, when they had witnessed Thor killing his own brother to be able to use the soul stone.

Steve and Nat had held hands for half of the way back to the cruiser, but Natasha had let go and avoided Steve for two days for fear of jumping his bones in a “thank God it wasn’t us” type of way.

“I just...I don’t think that talking about it now is a good idea,” the redhead said cautiously as she finally held his gaze.

Five years ago, Romanoff would have considered those baby blue eyes a liability to her, and devised a plan to grow out of her infatuation for Steve Rogers.

Now she wanted to be allowed to gaze at them whenever she felt like it.

“Why?” Steve asked gently as he strapped the shield to his back with his eyes still locked on her.

“Steve,” Natasha groaned as she shut her eyes tightly and started stepping away when she felt his hand wrapping around her wrist.

“Please hear me out,” the soldier pleaded, and Natasha almost laughed at how hearing the word ‘please’ from Steve’s lips elicited a damn Pavlov response in her.

Her muscles unclenched and her eyes opened without her consent, because it was so natural for her to pause and give Steve her undivided attention when he requested it.

The super soldier noticed of course, if the widening of his pupils and his quiet gasp were any indication.

“Natasha, just a week...or eight days? A few days ago,” Steve started hesitantly, but he sighed then took a deep breath and resumed in a much calmer tone. “We saw Thor sacrifice his own brother to get the soul stone. That was the third time Thor had witnessed Loki die...”

“I’m still here, Steve,” Natasha assured him, putting her free hand on top of his over her wrist. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You don’t know that,” he quickly countered with a shake of his head and a minute squeeze of his hand around her wrist. “You could have gone to ashes like Bucky after Thanos...Every time we’ve gone out there to fight, we could have never returned.”

“But we have,” the former spy pointed out, unsure where Steve was going with that speech. “What is this really about, Rogers?”

“It’s about me trying not to be too late again,” he answered candidly, his eyes shining with more emotion than Natasha felt ready for.

The sharp beep announcing the end of their training time and F.R.I.D.A.Y. asking them if they wanted to set another simulation bought her some time to think of what to say.

Because, for all her pining for Steve, Natasha had never hoped that he would feel the same way about her.

She knew that he found her attractive, of course, very few people did not. But his insistence that they remain friends, his strict professionalism when it was just the two of them on missions, his far away gaze when he reminisced the past had convinced Natasha that Rogers wasn’t interested in her the way she was in him.

Plus, who was she kidding? In a corner of her mind she still held the belief that the golden American boy would never stoop so low as to touch a former Russian assassin like _that_. That part of her psyche had kept her in check for years with reminders that he only respected her because she was efficient; that they had become friends in the first place only because they had needed trust between them when they had been hunted down by Hydra; that she would never measure up to incredible women like Peggy or Sharon Carter.

Natasha blinked, incredulous to discover that she had been so very wrong.

“I know that you care for me, you don’t have to say it Steve,” she said, still in denial about the implications of her partner’s words.

The super soldier sighed, briefly closing his eyes before sliding his hand up Natasha’s arm to rest it on her shoulder.

“Natasha,” he whispered with longing that echoed into the former spy’s heart.

The heart that had been slightly but surely broken by Bruce years ago, and that she really ought to protect harder.

“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it Steve,” Romanoff blurted out, forcing herself not to take a step back because what in the actual hell?

This was Steve, her friend, her partner, her teammate, her co-leader...Her safehouse. He was even more familiar to her than Clint at this point, to the extent that she had taken to using Cap’s shield the way she had never taken to Hawkeye’s bow and arrows, though she knew she could master archery in a few weeks.

Was she really going to jeopardise the most steadfast relationship she’d ever had in her life for something as superfluous as romance? Then what? It’s not like they could get married and have kids, neither of them had any intention of retiring…

“Natasha,” Steve repeated, her name slipping through his lips louder this time, as if to ground her in the moment.

Scratch as if. Just as she knew Rogers like the back of her hand, Steve could read her perfectly unless she switched personas - which she hadn’t done in a long time.

“Tell me truthfully that you don’t feel the same and we can pretend that the last five minutes never happened,” Steve requested with a tiny squeeze of his hand on her shoulder. “I promise.”

Natasha looked into his sincere gaze, found longing and hope and doubts and love all mingled together, and couldn’t help a whimper to escape her lips before she leaned up and forward.

Ever in tune with her movements, Steve brought his free hand to the small of her back and bent down to meet her halfway into a rushed yet sweet kiss, his lips rubbing against hers softly but quickly shifting to equally soft nips, then simply pressing before going back to nipping.

By the time Natasha chided herself for losing track of her surroundings, her senses overwhelmed by Steven Grant Rogers kissing her, she realized that they had walked out of the training room and were shuffling towards their living quarters.

Steve deepened the kiss, and Natasha’s knees would have given away if she had not been the best spy of the Red Room.

She also would’ve missed the quiet steps a few meters away. She was sure that Steve’s super-hearing had detected them, but he clearly didn’t care and wow, Natasha was flattered that he would let anyone witness such a strong public display of affection just to enjoy making out with her.

The redhead still wasn’t keen on giving Carol a show - they had gotten close in the past few months, but not _that_ close - so she directed her partner towards her cabin, while her initial plan had been to go to Steve’s.

* * *

Natasha couldn’t help a teasing smirk from her lips as Steve’s cheeks flushed red at the mere sight of her body only covered by a towel.

“I should - should go back to my room,” Rogers stuttered as he stood up decidedly from the chair at her desk, his disheveled hair the only remnant of last night.

Natasha blinked as she realized that ‘last night’ wasn’t really the appropriate denomination for the last...five hours and a half, spent in the middle of nowhere in space. 

She walked to her closet and grabbed one of her kevlar uniforms.

“Nat?” Steve’s uncertain voice called out behind her.

“I don’t regret a second of it, don’t you dare question that,” she said, knowing too well what her partner - in more ways than before now, wasn’t he? - was thinking.

“I can hear the ‘but’ loud and clear,” Rogers said suspiciously.

She bought herself some time to think about how to phrase her next sentence carefully by dropping the towel and slipping into her underwear.

Or at least she thought that she could buy herself time by making Steve turn away at the sight of her naked body.

“I’m still not over the fact that I can see you...all of you, like this,” the soldier told her against her expectation.

His voice was significantly rougher than a moment ago and Natasha rolled her eyes at how it made her skin erupt with goosebumps.

“Well, get used to it, because this is how things are now...Right?” she finally said, and to hell with phrasing her words carefully.

“I’m not the one with my back turned,” Rogers pointed out, and she could _hear_ him smiling that little shit smile of his that so few people got to see.

Natasha turned back to him as soon as she zipped up her suit, letting him see her roll her eyes at him.

“I just don’t want us to drop our guard,” she admitted. “I don’t know about you, but if I let all this get to my head then I won’t be fit to finish the mission clear-headed.”

“We’ll be fine,” Steve promised as he took her hand. “Come on, it’s not like...It’s not like this...My feelings for you weren’t born yesterday. You know that. I know that you know, at least now you do.”

If someone had told Natasha that her chest would... _squeeze_ at hearing such soppy words just a few years ago, she would’ve broken their arms for being ridiculous.

“And I doubt we can compromise the mission when it all rests on Thor’s shoulders now, or rather his hand,” Steve added with a sigh before kissing the back of her hand and letting it go. “I’m not sure he’s up to the task yet.”

It had been eight days since Vormir. The team was halfway back to Earth, but Thor didn’t seem to be over his brother’s death yet.

Natasha herself had half hoped that the former villain had been playing tricks on them all and would return soon. After all, he was the most knowledgeable about how to use the stones.

“I’m not sure he even knows how to do it _without_ Loki,” Natasha added before picking up her towel and shoving it in the laundry chute. “It can’t be as simple as just snapping his fingers.”

“It was for Thanos,” Rogers reminded.

“Thanos who’s had how many years...How many _centuries_ to learn how to use the stones?” Natasha questioned as she perfunctorily brushed her hair and started braiding it. “Loki was the one who made the gauntlet.”

“Maybe he told Thor,” Steve said. “They were alone many times on our way to Zen-Whoberi and then to Vormir.”

“Shouting at each other mostly,” Natasha let him know as she unraveled the braid upon spotting a hickey peeking out from behind her ear. She barely stopped herself from sighing at the thought that Clint would never let her live it down.

“You spied on them?” Steve asked, the surprise on his face more for her lose hair than for her intel. “You didn’t tell me anything about that.”

“There was nothing to tell,” the former spy admitted as she tilted her head towards the door to invite him to leave with her, simultaneously showing him the hickey she was hiding with her hair down. “It was more compulsive than anything, I didn’t suspect either of them to look for trouble. And it felt wrong to violate their privacy.”

“Thank you for doing it anyway,” Steve said as he stepped behind her to walk out the cabin. “It was odd to have Loki help us fight against his former master.”

“Not odder than getting mind-controlled by Thanos himself,” Natasha objected as she stepped out of her cabin, immediately standing still at the sight that welcomed her and Steve.

Clint was leaning against the wall opposite to the door, inspecting one of his arrow heads.

Natasha felt Steve tense minutely, and wondered whether he was nervous about being found out or nervous about being found out by _Clint_.

“I’d say ‘finally’, but I’m saving that for Thor,” their teammate said as he pushed off the wall to place the arrow back in his quiver. “Still, took you two long enough. Nebula and Tony are almost done.”

“Don’t even think about doing what I suspect you’re thinking of doing,” Natasha told him before heading toward the bridge.

She blanked out the quiet words that her two best friends exchanged as she walked ahead of them to the lab. The former spy found it ridiculous that, along with their common experience as S.H.I.E.L.D agents and Avengers, the three of them could also now publicly exchange inside jokes about mind control just to annoy Tony.

But for now, they had to focus on completing the mission: bringing back half of the universe. It was true that Thor was the one using the stones, but when everyone returned it would be the whole team’s job to make sure that everything was under control.

* * *

“You know, we never did talk about it,” Steve told Natasha after Wanda and Vision left the living room hand in hand, late into movie night.

Sam and Bucky had left first, since they lived in the city - how they afforded it, Natasha could easily guess.

Though she knew right away what her partner referred to, for a second the former spy wondered what had brought the topic to the forefront of Steve’s mind.

Ah, Vision’s appearance. He had taken the habit of looking completely human off mission lately, but for some reason tonight he had worn his original skin, the mind stone glowing on his forehead.

“What would you like us to say?” Romanoff asked as she snuggled closer to him, smiling when he kissed the top of her head.

“How it felt to be mind-controlled, other than angry at Thanos for doing this to us,” Steve answered quietly, his breath brushing against her forehead. “Somehow I still can’t describe the experience in a concise way. I can’t imagine how Clint felt when he had to describe everything on paper.”

Natasha hummed in agreement.

It was unfair that being mind-controlled had taken such a toll on Clint’s life, professionally and personally - even if it had been only for a few months - while it had clearly benefited Natasha and Steve.

And maybe the two leaders of the Avengers had it easier because Thanos was dead, while Loki was a living reminder of Clint’s ordeal.

Natasha had waited days to tell her former teammate about Thor’s brother coming back to life and co-ruling New Asgard with their friend. After all, chances were very low that the Asgardian would ever put foot on Earth.

Clint had been mildly annoyed but mostly glad that the younger Odinson had escaped death yet again, so maybe he had finally forgiven the trickster for using the mind stone on him.

If she could talk to Thanos now, she would laugh at his face for choosing her among his many enemies, and jokingly thank him for lowering her filters that fateful day.

“We were so talkative,” she recalled with a smile, and she felt Steve’s chuckled vibrate against her chest.

“With absolutely no filter,” the supersoldier added as he rubbed his nose against her temple.

“Are you sniffing me, Rogers?” Natasha teased, failing to hold her laughter when Steve groaned in embarrassment.

“You do smell very good,” he admitted, almost shily. “But I swear, I never pay attention to those kinds of details while on missions.”

“Neither do I, but I very much indulge going through every detail post-debrief,” the redhead confessed as she lifted her head to drop a quick kiss on Steve’s lips.

Well, she had meant it to be a quick kiss, but it quickly turned into a deep, if still tame kiss.

“You’re avoiding the topic, Romanoff,” Rogers chided her after pulling away a few minutes later.

“I really don’t have much to say about it, same as you,” she assured as she slipped her hands underneath the tight-fitted long-sleeved shirt Steve was wearing.

“You could share what little you do have to say,” he encouraged in a very steady tone, his voice belying his excitement at her touch, but she could see the blue of his irises receding behind his pupil.

“It’s not what I expected, that’s all,” Natasha finally commented with a smirk.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!
> 
> I wasn't expecting to revisit this universe so soon, but reading the Endgame fix-it "We're In The Endgame Now" by the amazing TheDestinyWay1000 gave me the urge to pop another "Romanogers Is Endgame" work.
> 
> Also, WHY am I the first person to use "Black Widow (MCU)" as a fandom tag? Hopefully there will be many more uses after the first trailer of the movie. I've been DREAMING of the movie, multiple times, I'm that excited for it.


End file.
